We are a group of educators, students, and parents seeking a democratic society. We are concerned with questions like: How can we teach against racism, nationalism and sexism in an increasingly authoritarian and undemocratic society? How can we gain enough real power to keep our ideals AND teach? Whose interests do schools serve in a society that is ever more unequal? We want to learn about equality, democracy and social justice as we simultaneously struggle to bring those into practice.

06 December 2008

I hope the blog helps us spur discussion, especially within the SC. And it may make the RF Updates better too. I am planning to send a version of this out to the email list Sunday night. Anyone have anything they think should be added or deleted?

Below the RF update proposal is a letter to the NYTimes, which they probably will not print.

It is possible to fight back but only if that resistance takes up the question of the system of capital itself as well as the impact of this crisis in schools where curricula regimentation, high stakes testing, and miltarization will intensify under Obama as that is what this social system requires---unless school workers, parents and kids develop the solidarity and good sense to fight; not starve.

Bill Ayers claims he was just another part of the anti-war movement and never killed anyone. Phooey. I am a former member of the Students for a Democratic Society, the largest student movement in US history and a radical yet today. The terrorist Weatherman sect destroyed SDS when, in 1969, they sought to replace a movement of people organizing for equality and peace with Ayers’ authoritarian mis-leadership and bombs. Before the biggest outpouring of student activism in the last century, the Weathermen demolished the SDS mailing list, leaving the movement with no center. They killed themselves and SDS. Weatherman was the “action-faction,”celebrating irrationalism, drugs, and exploitative sex, pandering to the peasant nationalism of the day. They opposed the radical, “going to the root,” of social problems. They held most people in the world in contempt. Then, Ayers was a liberal with explosives and hubris. Today, Ayer is a foundation-funded liberal: see Mayor Richard Dailey’s endorsement. There is no "new" Bill Ayers, as he claims. He opposed a mass based class conscious movement for equality and freedom then, and opposes it now. Those of us who fought the Weathermen in SDS, and who did not abandon the grassroots struggle for worldwide justice, know him for what he is. That Ayers clearly backed the liberal Obama, who promises wider wars, and bailouts to the rich, is no surprise.